page_title: White people
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: White people / Census and social definitions in different regions / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Painting by an unknown painter, circa 1842. The original is owned by the Community of Christ archives. It is on display at the Community of Christ headquarters in Independence Missouri, where its provenance is explained. The painting was originally in the possession of Joseph Smith III (died 1914), who is recorded as commenting on the painting. The c. 1842 date is given by the Community of Christ, the painting's owner. Māori: He waituhi e whakaahua ana i a Joseph Smith. E waituhia ana tēnei waituhi e he kaiwaituhi tautangata i te tau 1842, pea.
context_page_description: White people is a racial classification and skin color specifier, used mostly and exclusively for people of European and Western Eurasian descent; depending on context, nationality, and point of view. The term has at times been expanded to encompass persons of Middle Eastern and North African descent, persons who are often considered non-white in other contexts, and at times excluded people of Southern European descent. The usage of "white people" or a "white race" for a large group of mainly or exclusively European populations, defined by their light skin, among other physical characteristics, and contrasting with "black people", Amerindians, and other "colored" people or "persons of color", originated in the 17th century. It was only during the 19th century that this vague category was transformed in a pseudo-scientific system of race and skin color relations.
  The concept of a unified white race did not achieve universal acceptance in Europe when it first came into use in the 17th century, or in the centuries afterward. Nazi Germany regarded some European peoples such as Slavs as racially distinct from themselves.
context_section_description: The cultural boundaries separating white Americans from other racial or ethnic categories are contested and always changing. Professor David R. Roediger of the University of Illinois, suggests that the construction of the white race in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves. By the 18th century, white had become well established as a racial term. According to John Tehranian, among those not considered white at some points in American history have been: the Germans, Greeks, white Hispanics, Arabs, Iranians, Afghans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Slavs and Spaniards. Finns were also on several occasions "racially" discriminated against and not seen as white, but "Asian". The reasons for this were the arguments and theories about the Finns originally being of Mongolian instead of "native" European origin due to the Finnish language belonging to the Uralic and not the Indo-European language family.
  During American history, the process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship. The Immigration Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to "any alien, being a free white person". In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people. By 1923, courts had vindicated a "common-knowledge" standard, concluding that "scientific evidence" was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a "performance-based" standard, relating to religious practices, education, intermarriage and a community's role in the United States.
  In 1923, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that people of Indian descent were not white men, and thus not eligible to citizenship. While Thind was a high caste Hindu born in the northern Punjab region and classified by certain scientific authorities as of the Aryan race, the court conceded that he was not white or Caucasian since the word Aryan "has to do with linguistic and not at all with physical characteristics" and "the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences" between Indians and white people. In United States v. Cartozian (1925), an Armenian immigrant successfully argued (and the Supreme Court agreed) that his nationality was white in contradistinction to other people of the Near East—Kurds, Turks, and Arabs in particular—on the basis of their Christian religious traditions. In conflicting rulings In re Hassan (1942) and Ex parte Mohriez, United States District Courts found that Arabs did not, and did qualify as white under immigration law.
  Still today the relationship between some ethnic groups and whiteness remains complex. In particular, some Jewish and Arab individuals both self-identify and are considered as part of the White American racial category, but others with the same ancestry feel they are not white nor are they perceived as white by American society. The United States Census Bureau proposed but then withdrew plans to add a new category to classify Middle Eastern and North African peoples in the U.S. Census 2020, over a dispute over whether this classification should be considered a white ethnicity or a race. According to Frank Sweet "various sources agree that, on average, people with 12 percent or less  admixture appear White to the average American and those with up to 25 percent look ambiguous (with a Mediterranean skin tone)".
  The current U.S. Census definition includes as white "a person having origins in any of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa." The U.S. Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation describes white people as "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa through racial categories used in the Uniform Crime Reports Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce." The "white" category in the UCR includes non-black Hispanics.
  White Americans made 
caption: Joseph Smith, American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement
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